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Tendai Gukutikwa
Post Correspondent
NYANGA Rural District Council has received a total of $40.1 million as devolution funds since 2019 and has channelled a large portion of the money to procure service vehicles as well as improving health service delivery.
In an interview, Nyanga RDC chairperson, Councillor Margaret Nyahoda, said the council which was operating without adequate service vehicles for years acquired a seven-tonne lorry and a dumper trailer.
She said plans are afoot to add a motorised grader to the fleet with future devolution funds.
She said, while Government used to make decisions for communities, it is no longer the case as under devolution, priorities are set by the people and for the people.
She gave an example of the surfacing of the 13km Charamba-Chirimanyimo Road in Nyanga South, which connects wards nine, 15, 19 and 20 as a project which was tabled by the local community.
“After the decentralisation of decision-making, we consulted the community through their councillors and tabled to us priority lists of the areas they wanted developed. That is what is guiding us on what areas to prioritise when utilising the devolution funds.
“We surfaced the Charamba-Chirimanyimo Road to make it trafficable. The terrain there is bad. We also rehabilitated roads in Nyanga urban as well as erected street lights in the tourist village,” said Councillor Nyahoda.
The local authority also constructed a state-of-the-art Nyamhuka People’s Market which accommodates 68 vending stalls.
The new market built at a cost of $2 149 000 now awaits commissioning.
According to the National Public Infrastructure Investment Programme for 2021 document crafted by the Finance and Economic Development Ministry, Government provides the right framework for building back better all the critical public infrastructure services required for the country’s socio-economic development with input from benefitting communities.
She said they also used $23m to construct and rehabilitate five health centres across the district.
The health centres include Mukunza, Sanhani, Sande-Munemo, Nyajezi and Mapako.
Sande-Munemo Rural Health Centre was commissioned yesterday (Thursday).
“We are also in the process of purchasing a mobile clinic vehicle which will service remote areas because we do not want to leave anyone behind. We have approximately 27 000 people who will be serviced by these five clinics as they are located evenly across the district.
“We will use the mobile clinic to reach the remotest parts of Nyanga,” she said.
She added: “In total, we have received $40.1m as devolution funds from Government since 2019. Of that amount, $7.3m was received in 2019, $6.1m in 2020 and $26.6m in 2021. Every cent can be accounted for. We are not sitting on any money because the balance that we have in our account is meant to pay our contractors after finishing their work,” she said.
Councillor Nyahoda said they prioritised spending the devolution funds on projects that were already underway before the disbursement of devolution funds.
“Most of our projects were already underway and we were having challenges in completing them since ratepayers are struggling to settle their bills. When devolutions funds were availed, we prioritised finishing these projects first,” she said.
Nyanga RDC is also working with schools to improve access to education as well as drilling boreholes.
In an interview, a local, Ms Chiratidzo Bushu expressed gratitude on Nyanga RDC for prioritising project that impact on people’s lives.
“We used to travel long distances to access medical services, but thanks to devolution funds we now have nearby clinics.
“Nyanga RDC is also proving to be a listening local authority as it prioritised all the projects we pointed out to them,” she said.
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